Mine(d)Fields: South African artists on Swiss terrain
by Robyn Sassen
This ground on which we stand, as post-apartheid South Africans, ten years into the understanding of democratic existence, remains as sensitive, irritable and unpredictable as it has always been. It is coloured by ugliness and beauty, brutality and fragility, contradictory historical values, and poverty and wealth.
This guiding awareness became the premise that impassioned Sabine Schaschl-Cooper of the Kunsthaus Baselland, Beate Engel and Katrien Reist van Gelder of the Stadtgalerie in Bern, and Stephen Hobbs from The Premises Gallery, Johannesburg, enough to begin work on 'Mine(d)Fields', a major cross-cultural art event.
As a team, Schaschl-Cooper, Hobbs, Engel and Reist van Gelder have created a laboratory of exchange and dialectic to explore these fields of tension, not only to reflect on South Africa, but as a metaphor for north-south dialogue. The communication that emerges from this exchange will embrace an "enriching misunderstanding" focusing on the kernel of concerns defining South African contemporary art.
It's a cultural laboratory, intellectually rooted in the respective galleries, home to each curator. Opening to the Swiss public in August, 'Mine(d)Fields' will launch a week apart in the two venues: Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel and Stadtgalerie, Bern. These cities are roughly 80km apart, and represent different civic, community and economic values. The exhibition will come to South Africa in 2005, to The Premises Gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
'Mine(d)fields' presents work by artists dealing with their political and social context from many different perspectives. South African participants are Nicholas Hlobo, Alison Kearney, William Kentridge, Moshekwa Langa, Thando Mama, Santu Mofokeng, Brett Murray, Jo Ractliffe, Robin Rhode, Berni Searle, Penny Siopis and Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko.
The participating Swiss artists, Dias/ Riedweg, Mo Diener, Monika Dillier, Samuel Herzog, Mario Sala and Markus Schwander, and Austrian artist Peter Friedl, have individually spent extensive research and production periods in South Africa.
'Mine(d)Fields' aims to forge creative co-operation between the South African and Swiss contributors, to open fields of debate in both countries, regarding international relations, social and cultural development. The art is thus set in a broad intellectual framework of round table discussion and workshops.
The project is designed to function on different levels: the Kunsthaus Baselland, the STAGA-Pavillon of the Stadtgalerie Bern, public site-specific locations in Bern, a website, a catalogue and a lively theoretical stage, with a reading room and lectures by the participating artists.
Above all, 'Mine(d)fields' has no direct, definable agenda. It might suggest that any attempt to survey artistic and cultural practice in post-1994 South Africa cannot be prescribed one-sidedly. It may refer to the plotting of territorial lines, the mining of precious minerals, or the possessive pronoun. By its nature, the title itself embraces palimpsestic word-play, confronting a sensitivity toward rebuilding and redefining process and meaning.
